History of Hindustan-Its art and its science Volume 2

supreme chief. Nature herself, in fact, seems to have placed, in this respect, a barrier to human pride; forbidding Hindostan, except in the limited way just intimated, to continue long under the con­ trol of one overgrown monarch. To bound the ambition of princes, over the surface of the country she drew those vast lines which so peculiarly distinguish that quarter of the globe ; those lofty moun­ tains, those deep and rapid rivers, those extensive lakes, those vast deserts of sand and impassable forests, which intersect India. Again, whatever may be boasted by the Indian historians concerning themselves, and the chain of succession remaining for such an extend­ ed period of years unbroken, in its two first and greatest dynasties of the sun and moon, their accounts are rendered exceedingly sus­ picious, not only by what we know of the perpetual proneness in mankind to abuse extensive power, but by the corruptions ne­ cessarily attending the education of Eastern princes, by the number of royal children yearly produced in the seraglios, and by the spirit of intrigue that in a particular manner constantly agitates the Asiatic courts, amidst so many rivals as the first order of nobility affords for wealth, power, and renown. Divided by the Oriental geographers into two grand portions, A l S i n d , or the tract lying on the Indus, and A l H i n d , or the territory stretching on both sides the Ganges, Hindostan, or Superior India, seems, from time immemorial, amidst innumerable sove­ reignties of inferior degree, to have cherished, on its two great rivers, two mighty kingdoms, while the Peninsula, till subdued by Akbei and Aureng-Zebe, exhibited a third, formed exactly on the same feudal principles. Alexander, on his invasion of the Panjab, experienced the truth of this statement, in the formidable opposition which he met with from Porus; and the report of the ambassadors of Seleucus, at Pallibothra, fully confirms it with respect to the re­ gions adjoining the Ganges. The confederated rajahs, who so W bade defiance to the Mohammedan armies in the Deccan, leave in o-ur minds no doubt of this fact in regard to the Peninsula. The

most powerful, because the most remote from foreign invasion, of these kingdoms seems to have been that on the Ganges, of which Oude, Pallibothra, Canouge, and Gour, were the successive capitals. When the early Mohammedan sultans of the Gaznavide dynasty conquered the Superior India, they politically made Delhi, founded on the ruins of the ancient Hastanapoor, which seems to have been the first imperial city of Hindustan, and stands on the river Jum na that disembogues its water into the Ganges, their principal residence, because it was more central, and placed them nearer their territories on the west of the Indus, which extended even to the capital of their hereditary domain. Afterwards even Lahore and Cabul became the successive abode of those sovereigns, who erected in them magnificent palaces; while the victories of Akber, in the Deccan, gave being to the superb palace and splendid decorations of Agra. The puissant sovereign of die empire on die Ganges, an em­ pire which comprehended Delhi and the Dooab, and extended to the eastern limits of the Panjab, seems to have been for many ages acknowledged Lord Paramount of India, and accordingly we have seen, that, when Judishter celebrated the great festival of the R a i s o o , to the capital of that empire all the inferior rajahs flocked, and, at a very late period of its glory, an instance related in the Introductory Work occurs of the pre-eminent grandeur of the Ca- liouge sovereigns in the following terms: Sir William Jones, speaking of this paid of India, says; “ The an­ cient system of government, which prevailed in this country, seems to have been perfectly feudal: all the territories were governed by rais, or rajahs, who held their lands of a supreme lord, called Bal- hara ; the seat of whose residence was the city of Canouge, now in ruins.” * The Ayeen A kberyf exhibits a curious proof of this feudal dependance of the subordinate, rajahs, and the necessity of their paying homage in person, at stated periods, to the supreme Balhara; * Description o f Asia, p. 30. f See Ayeen A kb er/, vol. ii. p. 120. VO L. II. UUU

for, at a great festival, or sacrifice, called R a i s o o , at which all t h e rajahs of Hindostan were obliged to attend, and of which the meanest offices, “ even to the duties of the scullery,” were performed by rajahs; Pithowra, the rajah of Delhi, from contempt of the sovereign, not attending, “ that the festival might not be incomplete,” an effigy in gold of the absent rajah was formed, and by way of retorted con­ tempt assigned the ignoble office of porter of the gate. 1 he rash­ ness of Pithowra, in the .end, cost him his crown and his life.* The profound policy of an institution, like this, must be evident to the reader, since it at once cherished the bond of general union, and preserved in a necessary state of subordination the detached members of a widely-extended empire. The strength of this bond, and the degree of this subordination, without doubt, greatly varied, according to the degree of energy and wisdom possessed by the supreme head. If he were valiant and enterprising, the whole civil and military power acted as the counsel and army of one sovereign ; if cowardly and effeminate, the bond became relaxed in proportion, and the inferior dependent states insulted the throne they were intended to protect and adorn. In truth, the f e u d a l s y s t e m seems to have originated in the East, perhaps first in the wide plains of India; and, by the northern hordes that inundated Europe, and overwhelmed the Roman empire, towards the close of the fourth century, it was imported into Europe; whose system of laws and government gra­ dually experienced, from that introduction, a considerable change. By the same hardy race, the descendants of the Tartar tribes that tenanted the north of Asia, were introduced a r m o r i a l b e a r i n g s , which originally were nothing more than the hieroglyphic symbols, mostly of a religious allusion, that distinguished the banners of the potentates of Asia: for instance, in India, Veeshnu had the eagle, Seeva the bull, Rama the falcon, engraved on their banners; animals respectively sacred to them in their system of mythology.

The ancient standard of the Tartars displayed the sun rising behind a recumbent lion ; the eagle of the sun was engraved on that of Persia, whose inhabitants worshipped that orb, and it will.be remem­ bered that the Hebrew tribes had also their sacred symbolic devices, descriptive of their office, character, or situation. Had the Indians continued thus united, according to the original intention of their legislator, they would probably have remained, if not unmolested, at least unconquered, by that swarm of foreign, particularly Persian and Tartar, invaders, which harassed, in every asra, their devoted country. But the great distance of many of the provinces governed by those subordinate princes, from the capital of the reigning Maharajah, added to the amazing strength of those lofty fortresses that abound in every region of India, some utterly in­ accessible to an enemy, and others impregnable by any force that could be brought against them in those days, were a perpetual temptation to the feudal sovereigns of those provinces to violate the grand national compact, to withhold the stipulated tribute, and en­ gage in acts of rebellion against the supreme constituted authority. The same species of dark and criminal policy, which, in the present century, induced Nizam-al-Muluck, the self-constituted sovereign of Deccan, to invite Nadir Shah from Persia to invade the Superior India, and which ultimately proved the destruction of an empire which he meant only to convulse, in order to escape punishment amidst that convulsion, seems to have been the principal cause of the Tartar and Persian chiefs originally gaining any permanent footing on the Indian shore. Abounding in every species of production that could allure the avarice or gratify the luxury of Eastern despots; with treasure in gold and jewels to pay the vast armies which their fears and their cruelty compelled them to maintain ; with the richest manufactures to ornament the body, and with the choicest fruits, odours, and spices, with which to indulge, even to satiety, the de­ lighted senses; that envied country needed not the invitation of the domestic traitor to draw down upon its fruitful territories the horrors Uuu 2

and devastation inseparable from invasion. That, however, was precisely the case with respect to the first interference of foreigners with their internal government; for, we are expressly informed by their own historians, that it was principally owing to civil dissen­ sions springing up among themselves, that the aid of Persia was first demanded in the time of Feredun, sixth sovereign of the Pishdadian dynasty, who naturally took advantage of those distractions to bend India, at least in tributary obedience, to the power of Persia; but the Persian invasions of India will be the particular subject of the suc­ ceeding chapter. The old tradition, also, frequently intimated above, that the Indians were originally emigrated Iranians, undoubtedly had its effect in urging on their foes, both on the northern and western fron­ tiers, to attempt their subjugation ; for, it must here be observed, that, though the monarchs of I r a n and T u r a n were perpetually en­ gaged in hostilities, they were descended from the same primordial stock, and fought therefore with the embittered animosity of rela­ tions engaged in contest. Both, however, seem to have eagerly embraced every possible opportunity of oppressing the unoffending race to the south of the snowy mountains. This affinity, not gene­ rally known or attended to, added to an incorrect idea of the limits of the two countries just mentioned, has been the. occasion of much confusion in the historical accounts of this period and of this part of Asia; since many of the conquests of the Transoxan monarchs in India have been assigned to the Persians, and the honour of some of the achievements of the Persians, with equal injustice, has been conferred on the sovereigns of Turan. The first recorded invasion of India, either by Persian or Indian historians, took place under Feiedun, the sixth monarch of the first, or Pishdadian, dynasty, who, according to Sir William Jones, in his Short History of Persia, by which I shall principally guide myself in this survey of its ancient events, flourished about the year before Christ 750,* which,

though m any centuries later than the period generally fixed by the Asiatics for the reign of that prince, who was the son of the great Gemshid, the builder of Isthakar, or Persepolis, is very likely to be its true date. That monarch had three sons, among whom, from a determination formed, at an advanced period of life, to devote the remainder of it to studious retirement, he divided his vast empire. The name of the first was B a l m , probably the Salmanassar of Scrip­ ture, to whom he allotted Sy r ia ; that of the second, T ur, to whom % he assigned the country lying between the Gihun and Sihun, the ancient Oxus and Iaxartes, from him called T u r a n ; and that of the youngest, I r a g e , who received the largest and most beautiful por­ tion, including Khorasan and other provinces in the heart of the empire, thenceforth denominated, after himself, I r a n . “ This divi­ sion of the Persian empire,” says our author, “ into Iran and Turan, has been a source of perpetual dissensions between the Persians and Tartars, as the latter have taken every opportunity of passing the Oxus, and laying waste the districts of Khorasan ; they have even pushed their conquests so far, as to overturn the power of the califs, and afterwards to raise a mighty empire on the banks of the Ganges”* Of the unceasing contests carried on between these jealous and warlike nations, it was impossible for so powerful a race as the In­ dians to be unconcerned spectators. To the aid of one or the other of the contending parties they were compelled to send a considerable army, and the vanquished enemy generally took the earliest oppor­ tunity of revenging the affront, by the plunder of India in its most vulnerable parts. Whosoever conquered, they were infallibly the ultimate victims. The Tartars were animated to the attack by the thirst of plunder only; the Persians, in addition to that incentive, were goaded on by their religious principles, for their zealous adora­ tion of the solar orb and elementary fire, to which, in the early

t «18 ] periods of their empire, no temples were erected, and indeed, in the latter, only perforated domes were elevated to protect the sacred flame from the violence of wind and rain; the same impetuous zeal, I say, which led them, in their invasion of Egypt, to burn the magnificent temples of the Thebais, in which the grossest rites of bestial idolatry flourished, urged them to carry on implacable war against the kindred superstitions of India, where the animals and objects, by which the attributes of Deity were symbolized, were mistaken for deities themselves, and filled the Sabian devotee with indignation and horror. The reader shall presently be presented with a direct proof of this, on the authority of the Persian historian Mirkhond, when, we come to consider the exploits of Gushtasp, the Darius Hystaspes of the Greeks, in India. Our present concern is with the Tartars, whose first king, Ogliuz Khan, we left, in a former chapter, at a period so early as that of Hushang, the grandson ot Cauimaras, over-running with a vast army both Iran and the north ot India; and, in the same character of invader and plunderer, we are now to introduce its next most powerful monarch, A f r a s i a b , a direct, and not very distant, descendant from Tur, fixed by Jones to very near the year 800 before Christ. Afrasiab was probably the Phraortes and Aphraortes, mentioned by classical writers of the ancient Median histories; for, he seems to have poured his victorious armies over all the Higher Asia; and Media, in that general subjuga­ tion of its monarchs, might have also fallen under his dominion. Afrasiab, determined to assert his presumed right to ,the crown of Iran, passed the Oxus with a formidable army, attacked and defeated Nuzar, or Nudar, eighth prince of the Pishdadian dynasty, and, with the ferocity of a real Tartar, killing the vanquished monarch with his own hand, mounted his vacant throne, on which lie reigned twelve years ; but, at the end of that period, was expelled by the Vigorous exertions of Zalzer, the prince with golden hair, governor of the province of Segestan, and father of the renowned Rostam.*

It was, probably, during this period, that a refusal to transmit the tribute, which, in the next chapter concerning the Persian invasions of India, it will be seen the Indians, from the time of Feredun, were accustomed to pay to the kings of Iran, brought down upon S c h a n g a l , called Shinkol in Ferishta, who at that time usurped the Indian throne, and reigned at Canouge, the vengeance of Afra- siab. I think it proper to subjoin, in this place, what we read con­ cerning this usurper in Ferishta, though I trust, that, hereafter, as more ample resources are laid open for arranging its internal history, I shall be enabled to present the reader with a more extended,, and, possibly, a more correct, statement of the matter. “ Shinkol kept up a force of four thousand elephants of war, a hundred thousand horse, and four hundred thousand foot. When, therefore, Afrasiab, king of Iran, (more properly of Turan,) de­ manded his tribute, Shinkol, confiding in his own strength, refused to make any acknowledgement, but turned away the Persian am­ bassador with disgrace. Afrasiab, being enraged at this treatment, one of his generals, whose name was Peiran, was commanded to march against Shinkol with fifty thousand chosen troops. When intelli­ gence of this invasion came to Shinkol, he exalted the spear of defiance, and, raising a great army, marched forth to meet him. “ The two armies came in sight of each other near the hills on the frontiers of Bengal. The battle soon began, and it lasted two days and two nights, without victory declaring on either side. The Turks, doing justice to their former fame, had by this time laid fifty thousand of the Hindoos upon the field; yet, on account of the number of the enemy, the harvest seemed not to decrease before them. In the mean time, eighteen thousand of the smaller army being slain, a weakness appeared- distinctly on the face of their affairs. However, urged as they were, they made a third attempt, and, finding themselves overcome, they fought as they retreated to the mountains; there they took possession of a strong post, from which it was impossible to drive them. From this post they con-

firmed, with small parties, to harass the neighbouring country, and in the mean time dispatched letters to Afrasiab, giving him an ac­ count of their situation. “ Afrasiab was at that time in the city of Gingdis, which is situated between Chitta and Chin, and about a month’s journey beyond the city of Balich. When he received intelligence of the situation of Peiran, he hastened to his relief with a hundred thousand horse, and came just in time to save him from destruction; for, Shinkol had so closely invested him with a numerous army, that, in a few days more, he must have perished with famine, or submitted himself to the mercy of an enraged enemy. Afrasiab without delay assaulted Shinkol; the terrified Hindoos, unable to stand the combat, were dispersed like straw before the storm, leaving their wealth and equipages behind. When Peiran was relieved from his distress, Afrasiab pursued the enemy, and put thousands o f them to the sword. Shinkol himself hastened to Bengal, and came to the city of Lucknouti; but, being closely pursued by Afrasiab, he tarried there only one day, and then fled to the mountains of Turhat. The Tartars ravaged the whole kingdom with fire and sword. “ Afrasiab having received intelligence of Shinkol, he directed his march towards him. Shinkol immediately sent some of the wise men of his court to beg peace and forgiveness for his errors, soliciting that he might have the honour to kiss the foot of the lord of nations. Afrasiab yielded to his entreaties* and Shinkol, with a sword and a coffin, was brought into his presence. It was agreed between the kings, that Shinkol should accompany Afrasiab to Turan, and that his son should have the empire restored to him, upon condition of paying an annual tribute. Thus Shinkol continued to attend Afra­ siab, who returned to his own dominions, till, in one of the battles with Rostjam, he was slain by that hero’s sword. “ Shinkol is said to have reigned sixty-four years. His son Rhoat, who succeeded him in the throne, was a wise, religious, and affable, pi inee. I he revenues of his empire, which extended from Kirmi to

Malava, he divided into three parts; one of which he expended in charities, another he sent to Afrasiab for his tribute, including also a large surplus for the use of his father; and the other third was appropriated to the necessary expenses of his government.” * Afrasiab, having been thus expelled Iran by Zalzer, assisted by Rostam, his son, then but a youth, neglected no opportunity of ha­ rassing the Persian empire under the two weak princes that suc­ ceeded to its throne. At length Caicobad, the first monarch of the Caianian dynasty, so called from Ca i, a word signifying the great king, and the Cyaxares of the Greeks, under their joint protection, assumed its sceptre and restored its ancient splendor. With Rostam, now mature in years and wisdom, for his general, he marched into the territories of the Turanian sovereign, and defeated him in a great battle, from which he with difficulty escaped alive. Rostam, for this and other services, was made governor of Zablestan, which, in­ cluding both Cabul and Gazna, cities situated close on the borders of India, and intimately connected with it by commerce, rendered him necessarily attentive to what was transacting in that region, and eventually caused it to become the theatre of many of the ex­ ploits of that celebrated warrior. The death of Caicobad opened a new field for the hostile efforts of Afrasiab against Iran, and he ac­ cordingly once more commenced them with such signal success, as, in a battle fought in Mazenderan with Cai-Caus, his successor, to take that king prisoner ; but this intelligence having reached the ears of Rostam, he immediately entered Turkestan with a vast army, wasted all before him with fire and sword, and swore that he would lay the whole realm in desolation, if Afrasiab hesitated imme­ diately to liberate his imprisoned master. The outcries and distress of the terrified inhabitants, who were on the point of rising in general rebellion, had the effect of inducing Afrasiab to set the king of Persia at liberty, after he had solemnly promised to recall the terrible VO L. II. * Ferishta’s Hindostan, p. zo, first edition. XX X

Rostam, on whom, in reward, Cai-Caus bestowed his own sister in marriage; and, that so great a genius in military affairs might not remain unemployed, he sent him, with armies proportion ably power­ ful, to conquer Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and all Asia Minor, which he successfully accomplished. The Persian empire now approached to the zenith of its glory, and the mighty Shahinshah only wanted the addition of the empires of Turan and India to be the master of Asia. The same Rostam, if in this period of Persian history we are not hurried away by Oriental writers into the region of fable, under the succeeding reign accomplished that desired event also. That reign, however, was the reign of Cai-Khosru, or the great Cyrus; the reign of enterprize and of glory, when Wisdom planned and Valour fought. The occasion of Cai-Khosru’s invasion of Turan, according to Mirkhond in D’Herbelot,* was the murder of his father Siavek, an appellation in which we can find no traces of the Cam- byses of the Greeks, at the court of Afrasiab, where his newly- married wife Franghiz was delivered of Cai-Khosru, after the death of that father. Franghiz was the daughter of Afrasiab, and from her Cyrus derived that hereditary claim upon the throne of Turan which he afterwards so successfully exerted. The rival armies were led by the two greatest monarchs that the East ever saw, assisted by the two greatest generals it ever produced. The name of the Tartar general was Peiran Visseh, (the same person mentioned above in the extract from Ferishta,) and Rostam still, at an advanced age, headed the Persians. In this contest Schangal, king of India, is expressly men­ tioned by Mirkhond as an ally of Afrasiab, and as fighting on his side, together with the Kha-Khan of Great Tartary, and this offen­ sive step or Schangal was probably the cause of the consequent descent of Rostam upon India, which both the Indian and Tartar histones enumerate among the conquests of that great warrior. The long and sanguinary contests which had agitated the two branches of * See D ’Herbelot B iblioth, O rient, under the article Siavek and Rostam.

the family of Feridun, were to be terminated for a time, at least, if not for ever, by the approaching battle between the great surviving chiefs oi it. The Tartar sovereign, owing to his vast superiority in numbers, was at first victorious, and drove the Persians back into their own province of Chorasan, where they fortified themselves in its mountainous districts, till powerful reinforcements arrived ; but the result was the total discomfiture of Afrasiab and the destruction of half his army. Retiring, however, into his own dominion, he soon recruited the waste of battle, and rushed with new vigour on the forces of Khosru. But in this second engagement he was again defeated, and had the heavy additional calamity to lose the valiant and faithful Peiran Visseh, over whom Khosru himself shed a tear of regret. The Iranian monarch, determined to follow up his victory, and crush, by one decisive blow, all the remaining hopes of Afra­ siab, pursued his march towards the capital of Turkestan, and at Kharesm, on the banks of the Oxus, obtained that memorable vic­ tory over Afrasiab, which proved the means of giving its present name to that province; for Khosru, finding he had gained the day, without any material loss on his side, is said exultingly to have ex­ claimed, “ Kharesmi-bud! I have gotten an easy victory !” * The path now lay open to the metropolis of Turan, which Khosru took; and, following the fugitive monarch from province to pro­ vince, at length overtook him, at the head of a small band of faithful troops, on the mountains of Azerbijian, where, being compelled to surrender, he was put to death by the order of the conqueror, who seems not to have thought his throne secure while Afrasiab lived. The death of this formidable rival left Khosru the undisputed so­ vereign of those two mighty empires. That he might more con­ veniently govern both, and be at hand with speed and energy to suppress any attempts at insurrection among the Turanian princes, he fixed his future residence at Balk, the capital of Chorasan, the X xx 2

ancient Bactriana; possibly be might have passed at this capital a portion of the summer months, which he is said, by Xenophon,* to have spent at Ecbatan, to avoid the intense heat ot that climate. With the fortitude of a conqueror in Khosru was united the wisdom of an able legislator, and he assiduously endeavoured, by mild laws and generous treatment, to reconcile the Turanians to their new sovereign, urging the folly of cherishing hostile sentiments against their Iranian neighbours, who sprang originally from the same stock, and were again become their fellow-subjects under the same king. The elegant conciseness with which Sir William Jones has, in a few lines, compressed the whole of the history of Cai-Khosru, in­ duces me to insert it in this part of our account of the Turanian empire, and the rather, because it confirms the circumstance stated in D’Herbelot, that the ruling sovereign of India was engaged in it. “ Cai-Khosru, whom the Persians consider as a demi-god, on ascend­ ing the throne, determined to revenge the death of his father, and to deliver his kingdom from the tyranny of Afrasian. lie, therefore, assembled all his forces, and gave battle to the usurper, who, on the other side, was supported by the kings of K h a t a i and I n d i a ; but the valour of Cyrus and of his general Rostam prevailed against the united power of so many sovereigns, and Afrasiab lost his life on the mountains of Media. This war is celebrated in a noble poem by the illustrious Ferdusi, who may well be called the Homer of Persia. During the vigorous government of Khosru, it is probable that Turan continued under the immediate control of the Persian mo­ narch ; but, in the time of Lohorasp, his successor, we find a native prince of its own again on the throne, and bound, by a tributary obligation, to the king of Iran. Lohorasp at first appears to be, and in point of time and order of succession ought to be, the Cambyses of the Greeks, but their characters are so extremely different, the

former being represented by the Orientals as a most virtuous and amiable prince, while the latter, according to the Greek writers, was a frantic and merciless tyrant, that the supposition is utterly re­ pugnant to reason. Lohorasp had two sons, the eldest of whom was the famous Gushstap, the Hystaspes of the Greeks, who, prematurely aspiring to the throne, excited and headed a rebellion against his father; but, being defeated, took refuge at the court of the sovereign of Turan, married his daughter, and kindled in that region also the flames of rebellion. He was on the point of leading into Iran a powerful army intended to dethrone his father and lawful sovereign, when Lohorasp, sinking under the weight of years and infirmity, took the resolution to avert from his kingdom the horrors of civil war, by a voluntary resignation of his sceptre to this turbulent and ambitious prince. Gushstap, on receiving this intelligence, was penetrated with a proper sense of shame and sorrow for his unworthy conduct to so good a father, and now set forward, with a splendid and peaceable retinue, to implore his forgiveness, and ascend his abdicated throne. Their meeting was in the highest degree tender and affecting, and, a cordial reconciliation taking place, Lohorasp was prevailed upon to live as a guest in the palace where he once swayed the sceptre; assisting his son till his death with his advice both in civil and martial concerns. He died at a very advanced age at Balkh, which he had made his constant residence, and thence ob­ tained the additional name of B a l k i , b y which he is distinguished in the Persian annals. With the reign of Gushstap, or Darius Hy­ staspes, the Greek history of events relating to India properly com­ mences; and, as no more irruptions of importance into India by the kings of Turan seem to have taken place for some centuries after­ wards, we shall, for the present, quit that remote region of Asia fpr Persia, and review the series of events that gradually paved the way to the subjugation of I n d i a , first, by the P e r s i a n s , and, afterwards, by their conquerors, the M a c e d o n i a n s .

CHAPTER II. Short Retrospect on the History of the ancient Sovereigns of M e d i a , according both to Oriental and Classical History. — Its Union with the Persian Throne formed the Basis of the Grandeur of the latter Empire. — The vast Extent of I r a n , or P ersia, in the Reign of the early Monarchs of the Ca i a n i a n Dynasty. — Its History, as connected with that of I n d ia , resumed and continued down to the Period of the Invasion of the latter Country by Gushstap, or Darius Ilystaspes. 1 * T h e empire of Media, if that name be justly derived from Madai, the son of Japhet,'which is the most probable etymon, must have been one of the most ancient in the world, and co-mval with the first esta­ blishment of regular governments in Asia. This great branch of the Japhetic family probably for a long time flourished in undisturbed security, owing to the strong and almost inaccessible nature of the country which they inhabited. The lofty mountains of Azerbijian, the Hyrcanian cliffs of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales, noticed by Milton, which are stated in the Short History of Persia principally to have reference to Sh ir v a n , the region of lions, and D a g h e s t a n , the country of rocks, provinces widely extending along the in­ hospitable shores of the Caspian Sea, sheltered the first settlers from the desolating fury of ambition, and on this account there is strong reason for believing that the dynasties of most ancient Median sove­ reigns, inserted in Herodotus and in Diodorus, from Ctesias, and affirm­ ed by those writers to have reigned during an immense period in the earliest ages, are not, as they are generally supposed to be, wholly imaginary. As the Median kings extended their power over the

southern and eastern provinces, adjoining their hereditary domain, they seem to have excited alternately the envy and assaults of the Assyrians and Tartars, between whom they were situated; for, we have seen, at page 220 and those succeeding, that both the Assyrian Ninus and the Scythian Oghuz subjugated them to their control. Indeed, so fatal to that power proved the assaults of these formidable nations, that it was not till the entire subversion of the Assyrian monarchs, that the Median empire again reared its head under Dejoces, generally, but improperly, considered as its first monarch; nor till Cyaxares, by a bold and successful manoeuvre, had expelled from his oppressed country the Tartar hordes, which had inundated the Southern Asia, that Media reached the height of its glory as an empire. Now there is a train of indisputable evidence to prove not only that Cyaxares was the Cai-Cobad of the Persians, but that the chief and the Scythians thus expelled were this very Afrasiab concerning whom so much has previously occurred, and those very Turanians, or Oriental Tartars, his subjects, who have been in this as well as in many other instances, confounded with the northern Scythians. It is remarkable that Cai-Khosru is represented by the Asiatic writers to have been the grandson of Cai-Cobad, in the very same manner as Cyrus is stated by the Greek historians to have been the grandson of Cyaxares. It does not appear, however, from Oriental writers, that this expulsion of the invading Tartars took place, in the manner de­ scribed by the Greeks, after a banquet to which their chiefs had been invited and massacred by Cyaxares, but that they were com­ pelled, by a vigorous and united exertion of the invaded nation, to repass the Oxus.* The subsequent conquest of Assyria, and destruc­ tion of Nineveh, its capital, by the same monarch, has been already noticed ; a conquest which widely extended the power of the Medes over the region of the Higher Asia, and was secured not only by bonds of public alliance, but by the force of domestic ties with Nebuchad-

nezzar, the reigning sovereign of Babylon, who married the daughter of Cyaxares. To Cai-Cobad, on the imperial throne of Iran, succeeded Cai-Caus, called by the Greeks Darius the Mede, the word Darius being form­ ed from Dara, the Persian word for sovereign; and the title, there­ fore, should more properly be applied to the dynasty than to any individual prince of Persia then flourishing. In his reign, with the assistance of his successor, Cai-Khosru, the great Cyrus, the Baby­ lonian kingdom was added to this amazing empire; and, at his death, Khosru, by hereditary right king of the empire, properly called Persia, became the undisputed sovereign of all the Greater Asia. But even this immense domain could not satisfy the bound­ less ambition of Khosru, who soon subjugated Asia Minor also, and, by the invincible Rostam, extended his sway over Syria and Ara­ bia; the Gulph of that name and ^Ethiopia forming the southern, and the Caspian and Euxine Seas the northern, limit of his empire; while the distant Aegean Sea washed it on the western, and the Indus on the eastern, frontier. Although the Indus be here stated, on the authority of Xenophon,* as its eastern boundary, that is only to be understood in a geographical sense; for, so rich a prize as India, and so near a neighbour to the provinces over which Rostam and his brave sons successively enjoyed little less than a kingly authority, can scarcely be supposed to have been, under this vigorous reign, absolved from that tributary dependance under which it was holden by former monarchs of Iran. In truth, the extracts from the native Hindoo records in Ferishta positively assert the continuance of that dependance in the following passage: — Speaking of the last sovereign of the race of Barage, (he means Bal R ajah ; for, the descendants of Bali Rama still reigned on the throne of Oude, in Bahar, where, in fact, this history places the capital of Barage,) Ferishta tells us that “ Keidar, a Brahmin, from the mountains of Sewalic, having * Cyropsedia, lib. viii. p. 233.

collected a great army, invaded him, and having in the end entirely defeated the king, wielded the sceptre of government with his own hands. When Keidar, the Brahmin, had claspt the bride of royalty in his arms, being a man of learning and genius, he became a great king; but, carrying the trappings of Cai-Caus and Cai-Khosru on his shoulders, he was constrained, by way of tribute, to send them annual gifts. In the latter end of his reign, one Shinkol, a native of Kin- noge, (the Shangal alluded to before,) having strengthened himself, took possession of Bengal and Baliar, where he had been governor; and, leading a great army against Keidar, after many battles had been fought with various success, the fortune of Shinkol at length prevailed.” * It is not my intention to enter in this place into any more length­ ened detail than has been given, in the preceding chapter, concern­ ing the warlike acts of the mighty Khosru and his general Rostam ; I mean only to shew that India, during the extended period of their glory in Asia, was not, as the Greek accounts insinuate, by making Hystaspes the first explorer of the Indus and the adjoining districts, wholly independent of the Persian empire. The fact is, that Rostam, by holding the large principalities of Sigestan and Zablestan, the ancient Drangiana and Arachosia, closely confining on the Western India, as fiefs, from the kings of Persia, possessed the key that opened an immediate passage into the heart of India; for, it has before been remarked, that Cabul is the capital of the latter province, and it is an old Indian adage, that nobody can be called the master of India who has not taken possession of Cabul. The extensive conquests of Cyrus, in Asia the Greater and the Less, have been already glanced at, to which Mirkhond and other Eastern historians bear full testimony, with only the difference of ascribing the honour of the greater portion of them to Rostam. In the disputed circumstance of the death of Khosru, they agree rather with Xeno- v o l . ii. * Ferishta, vol. i. p. 18, idem edit. Y yy

phon than Herodotus, recording that death to have happened in philosophic composure, in the plenitude of years and giory, and not in a disgraceful war with the Massagetes, as stated by the latter,* whose relation is much more applicable to the destruction of Afra- siab, the sanguinary tyrant of Turan, put to death for those enor­ mities by Khosru. It is most probable, therefore, that the Greek historian, who undoubtedly had heard some resembling story, during his abode in Asia, concerning the destruction of an army and chief­ tain, engaged, as the Persians incessantly were, with the Turanian barbarians, has, by a mistake easily enough to be accounted for in a foreigner, applied to Cyrus a catastrophe which might have actually befallen one of his generals, or, possibly, Afrasiab himself, the tyrannical and powerful antagonist of the Persian monarch. The fury of his frantic successor, Cambyses, happily for the repose of India, took a southern direction, and, after laying waste Egypt, exhausted itself in destructive expeditions to the country of th& Hammonians, in the Lybian deserts, and in wild projects to subdue the ^Ethiopians. Chronology marks Cambyses for the Ahasuerus of Scripture, in whose correct page, doubtless with reference to this last insane attempt, it is said his kingdom extended from I ndia even unto .E t h i o p i a . The preceding history, however, it should be remembered, is the Grecian account of Cambyses, who is very differently known to the Orientals both by name and character. That name is L ohorasp, and that character, as before observed, not cruel and tyrannical, but virtuous and amiable.■'f-' The softer Greek name of Cambyses was probably derived from the Persian K ambaksh, or granter of desires, one of the numerous titles often as­ sumed by the Persian sovereigns, in addition to their patronymic name, on ascending the throne. For a similar reason, doubtless, we find the same name bestowed by the Greeks on Siaveh, the native appella­ tion of the father of Cyrus. By Mirkhond he is stated to have passed

his long reign principally at Balkh, in Khorasan, imitating, in this respect, his predecessor, whose object was, by a residence in that most eastern province of Iran, to overlook and keep in awe, by his presence, his new subjects of Turkestan. Lohorasp, though thus himself remote from the storms of war, had a general very celebrated in Asiatic annals, of the name of G uderz, who is recorded to have pushed his conquests very far in the west, and, ravaging all Syria, to have returned to his government of Babylon loaded with the wealth of Palestine, whose capital, Jerusalem, he sacked and plundered, and attended by innumerable captives. This man, therefore, surnamed Bakht-Nassar by the Persians, must have been the Nebuchadnezzar of sacred history; and to him alone, if the Persian records truly state that no intermediate monarch reigned between Cyrus and Lohorasp, must be attributed all the outrages in Egypt, supposed to have been committed by Cambyses. The Persian histories make not the least mention of the usurpation of Smerdis, the Magi, of the murder of that impostor by the seven conspirators headed by Hystaspes, nor of the ingenious stratagem to effect the neighing of the horse, at sun-rise, put in practice by the groom of the latter, to secure him the Persian diadem. They state Hystaspes, or G ushstap, as they write the name, to have been the eldest son of Lohorasp, a prince of great talents, but of a haughty and martial disposition, constantly engaged, during his youth, in re­ bellious projects against his father’s life and throne; and, in his more mature years, endeavouring once more to rend Turan, the daughter of the nominal sovereign of which empire he espoused, from its tri­ butary dependance on the kings of Persia. At length, the prudent resignation by Lohorasp of a sceptre, which increasing years and in­ firmities rendered him unable'to wield with energy, saved himself from public degradation, while this unexpected act of paternal kind­ ness contributed to reclaim a son whom no menaces could daunt and no open hostilities subdue. For a long period they lived together in one palace in the utmost harmony and affection. The dethroned Yy y 2

monarch, at length disgusted with the pomp of courts, laid aside every vestige of his former dignity, invested himself with the habit of a priest, and retired to spend the remainder of his life in the solitude of a cloister, which he built for that purpose. In that solitude he passed thirty years in meditation and prayer, but it afforded not the repose for which he languished to his closing life; being, at the end of that period, barbarously massacred with the other Magi in an irruption of the Turanians. On this voluntary retirement of his father, Hystaspes having, by his marriage with the daughter of the king of Turanr more firmly than ever established the union of the two kingdoms, quitted Balkh as an imperial residence, and fixed his future abode at Istakar, called by the Greeks Persepolis, where afterwards he became the decided patron of the new superstition, which, under Zeratusht, was then springing up in Persia, and with the insignia of which he probably adorned the lofty walls and portals of that superb palace, hewn, as its name implies, out of the living rock. Concerning the age and meaning of those sculptures, many wild and baseless conjectures have been formed, but, though generally attri­ buted to the remote sera of Cayumeras and Gemshid, of which latter sovereign, in fact, they bear the name, being known to the natives by that of T akhti J em s h id , or throne of Jemshid, the Sabian mytho­ logy, and particularly the solar adoration, every where conspicuous throughout those stupendous ruins, appear indubitably to mark for their adorner, at least, if not for their founder, the imperial Archimagus. It is possible that Jemshid, who is recorded to have first introduced, among the Persians, the use of the solar year, and instituted, in commemoration of it, the magnificent festival of the N auruz, when the sun enters Aries, originally founded that mag­ nificent edifice, the wonder and ornament of Asia, and engraved on its walls the birth-day procession of nobles offering presents, usual on that solemnity, till a very late period, in the courts of the Persian sovereigns, and even of the Indian emperors, with which the massy porticoes and winding stair-cases are covered; yet it is more

than probable that Chdminar is indebted for no small share of its now-faded grandeur to Hystaspes; that Hystaspes, who was inferior only to Cyrus in the magnificence of his designs and in the extent of his power; under whose protection the arts and sciences advanced rapidly towards maturity in Persia; and by whose vigorous intellect the ancient prejudices, both in religion and government, were spurned, as is evidenced not less in his patronizing the reformer Zeratusht, than in his first establishing a formidable marine, ex­ ploring the shores of the Indus, and navigating the Persian and Arabian Gulphs. Were its ranging columns and the general plan of that immense fabric surveyed with an astronomical eye, I have no doubt but that, like the Stonehenge of our Druids, it would afford us a new insight into the scientific attainments in that line of the ancient Persians, the immediate pupils of the Chaldrean school. Whatsoever may be the decision of the reader concerning the dis­ puted age of Istakhar, no doubt can possibly be entertained of that of N akh ti R ost a m , two leagues distant from Persepolis, since it could not have been designed before the hero was born, and the mighty exploits had taken place, which the ornamental sculptures on that monument were intended to celebrate. Now, allowing to Rostam the very extended age which the Persian historians assign him, that hero (or rather the first and most celebrated of the name ; for, to give sense or credibility to the Eastern relations concerning him, we must suppose there to have been a succession, or dynasty, of them reigning in Sejestan) could not have been long dead when Hystaspes mounted the Persian throne; which circumstance, added to the impressive one of the mystic designation, (a direct allusion to the worship of the sun and of fire,) engraved on the front of that rocky shrine, forbid us to hesitate at pronouncing Hystaspes to have designed it in honour of the friend and defender of his family. The reader will observe that Istakhar is, throughout these short strictures, considered as a palace, not as a temple, in which light some eminent antiquaries have regarded these ruins; for, I am aware

that the erection of temples was contrary to the principle of the reformed religion of Zeratusht, and it was that very principle which urged them on with such furious zeal to destroy the sublime edifices first of Egypt, and, as we shall presently see, of India itself. If an objection should be started to this hypothesis, which gives the ho­ nour of founding Persepolis to Hystaspes, on the ground of the in­ scription not being written in the Zend character, which was then in use, and which, in that case, must have been long ago deciphered by learned Persians, the most satisfactory answer to this, and indeed to all similar questions concerning them, is to be found in Sir William Jones’s Essay on the Persians, who thinks it may reasonably be doubted whether those' characters are really alphabetical: he is of opinion 44 that they are secret and sacerdotal; or, perhaps, a mere cipher, of which the priests alone had the key,?’* and which, consequently, has perished with them. Concerning Zoroaster himself, the peculiar purity of the original dogmas which distinguished his enlightened sect, and the rapid diffusion of their influence, either by the force of arms or of argu­ ment, through nearly the whole of Asia, a diffusion so fortu­ nately introductory (perhaps intended to have been so by a su­ preme all-ruling Providence, during the blind and continued in­ fatuation of the Jews) to the still purer doctrines of Christianity, in a few centuries about to break forth and illumine the Pagan world; concerning that theologue, I say, the tenets which he propagated, and, as explained by himself, the innocent symbol which charac­ terized his almost Christian ritual, the f ir e , on which, radiating from the ark of the covenant, the Hebrews themselves were taught to look with a kind of religious awe, as the sublime kebla of their devotion; such extensive strictures have already occurred in the pages of the Indian Antiquities, as to preclude all necessity of resuming a subject which otherwise would naturally claim a distinguished place * Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 57.

in a work professedly retrospective on the interesting events -that anciently took place on the great theatre of Asia. One remarkable tact only, alluded to in a former page,** as more immediately con­ nected with this period of our history, again presses for notice; I mean the journey of the Persian sage in company with Hystaspes, probably in disguise, to the woody recesses of the Brahmins in the Supeiior India, to obtain initiation into the mysteries of their religion and the wonders of their philosophy. This visit of Hystaspes was, probably, the secret cause of the resolution which that monarch afterwards took, to be better acquainted with a country which pro­ duced and cherished, in ease and undisturbed retirement, a race of men so admirable for their wisdom and So renowned for their austerities. It is the duty of the historian to explore the secret springs of great public events, and, notwithstanding his invasion of India, as related by Herodotus, is generally'considered to have been the result of ambition and avarice united, I have very good au­ thority, which shall presently be adduced, for announcing that religion, a vehement desire of overturning the Brahmin superstition, and erecting upon its ruins the pure theism of Zeratusht, was the principal inducement to that irruption. In fact, that superstition, from the multiplied idols, bestial, human, and compounded of both forms, that crowd the walls of the Indian pagodas, which, though to the devout Indian they only present the idea of the personified attributes of God, yet to the abhorrent Persian appeared as so many direct objects of adoration, added to the innumerable pagodas them­ selves, which at that time covered the face of the country, must have been extremely offensive to a zealous advocate of the reformed religion of Persia; and thus Hystaspes, while he respected the Brahmins for their love of science and their devotion to philosophy, might deem himself bound, at all hazards, to attempt their conver­ sion, and, like Cambyses in Egypt, to root out the very vestiges of an

idolatry-so base and abominable. Such was the powerful incitement, or, at least, such was the plausible pretence, that, in after-ages, urged on the furious Mahmud, and the still more sanguinary Timur, to overwhelm with desolation the fairest region, and devote to sla­ very and massacre the happiest people of Asia. There is no occasion for our entering any farther into the history of events in Persia during this long reign, than as those events hear reference to India. For that reason, we shall pass over, as irrelevant to our subject, all that is related by Herodotus concerning the long sack and subsequent capture of Babylon by this monarch, and his subjugation of the Thracian territory. In respect to the same writer s relation of his unsuccessful expedition against the Scythians, which, of all those events, has alone any connection with the events ol this history, we shall extract an account of the occasion and progress of it from Oriental sources, which, however, will be found widely different, as to the conduct and the result of the campaign, from the melancholy detail given us by Herodotus; since Darius is by those _ writers recorded to have returned from it, as might well be expected , from so able and experienced a general, crowned with the most brilliant success. Whether, after all, the occasion of the Scythian war be rightly or erroneously stated by Mirkhond, the motive for that expedition was probably different from that assigned by the Greek historian, viz. the irruption of the Tartar hordes one hundred and twenty years before, in the time of Cyaxares; for, since that period, successive inter-marriages had strengthened the bands of connection between the two royal houses; and Darius himself, we have seen, had married the daughter of the Turanian emperor. It originated, according to Mirkhond, in religion; in the anxious desire of Hystaspes to diffuse, over the continent of Asia, the new faith of Zeratusht. With this important object in view, he wrote an urgent letter to Argiasp, the reigning sovereign of Turan, and his near relation, using every argument which his superior genius and fervid devotion to reformed Sabaism could invent, to induce him to

adopt the creed of the Persian theologue. The Turanian monarch* however, was so far from being convinced by the eloquence of the royal tiro, that he returned an answer which at once re­ proached Hystaspes for deserting the faith of his ancestors, and was replete with sarcastic reflections on the novel doctrines pro­ pagated by the upstart prophet whom he protected. Roused to revenge at this premeditated insult, Hystaspes and his valiant son Asfendiar immediately took the field, with all the forces of the empire, and, entering Turan, advanced to give its sovereign bat­ tle. Alter a contest of great obstinacy and slaughter, in which half the royal family of Turan perished, victory declared for the former; and, before Argiasp could levy a new army or rally the routed one, the victorious Persians were in his capital, where every thing was given up to pillage and the licentious outrages of an enraged soldiery. Having taken this signal re­ venge for religion derided and a throne insulted, Hystaspes marched triumphantly back to his own dominion, where, from one or other of those various causes, jealousy, or suspicion, which distract Eastern courts, he shortly after tarnished his laurels by imprisoning the prince, who was the partner of them, in a strong fortress, on the summit of a lofty hill, called Gaird-Kuh, or the Round Mountain, in the country of Rudbar.* The hostile flames, lighted at the new altar erected by Zeratusht to the sovereign power who formed the elements, still burned with unextinguishable fury in the northern Asia. Goaded by the re­ collection of the aggravated injuries recently received from the Persian monarch, his slaughtered relatives and ruined capital, Ar­ giasp, now, in his turn, meditated a deep and dreadful blow at the very existence of the empire of Iran, and the holy impostor, (as he deemed him,) who had instigated Hystaspes to invade his dominions, V O L. II. * Mirkhond apud Texeira, p. 66. ZZZ

Balkh, the capital of Corasan, was at that time the hallowed re­ sidence of Zeratusht and the Magi, his disciples. The hoary monarch who had once wielded the sceptre of Iran, secluded in the cloister which he had erected, in that metropolis devoted the few moments of his declining life to meditation and prayer. But soon the sacred fires were to be quenched by the blood of the ministering priests, and the ashes of royalty to be blended with those of the altar, which its power had protected. Indefatigable in collecting an army adequate to the full accomplishment of the extensive destruction which he intended should overwhelm his enemies, the Turanian sovereign rushed forwards at the head of the formidable foices he had raised, to the attack of Balkh, to which he instantly laid siege: and, having at length taken it by storm, with Tartar ferocity, put all the inhabitants indiscriminately to the sword, subverted the grand fire- temple, and sacrificed, as victims to his rage, Zeratusht and the seventy priests, who were in the act of officiating at it. Enfeebled by age, but retaining still a portion of the martial vigour which distinguished his juvenile years, the veteran Lohorasp, issuing from his cloistered retreat, at the head of a few faithful followers, in vain attempted to stem the deluge of Barbarians, who were spreading desolation through the sacred city. He fell early in the unequal con­ test; and, no obstacle then remaining to obstruct his march, Argiasp pressed on with his victorious army into the centre of Persia, where so great a panic had seized the Persians, that the prudent Hystaspes did not think it proper to make an immediate attack upon him. He suffered him to waste his strength in long and fatiguing marches and in attacks on fortified towns, which daily diminished his numbers. Then (at the united request of the nation, who loudly called for his release) liberating his son Asfendiar from confinement, he sent him, with a fresh and powerful army, against troops emaciated by fatigue and thinned by disease. The attack was made with such irresistible impetuosity that the Turanian army

was compelled to make its retreat out of Persia with more rapi­ dity than they had advanced into it, and were driven with great slaughter beyond the limits of the northern mountains. It was now evident that Asia could not, at the same time, hold two inonarchs of such power and military spirit as Hystaspes and Argiasp; the entire subjugation, or rather extirpation, of the latter was therefore determined on in the court of Persia, and Asfendiar only paused on the Scythian frontier to get his army recruited among the hardy race of the ancient Bactrians. Having ob­ tained those recruits, and being joined by his elder brother Bashu- ten, sent by Hystaspes, and with powerful reinforcements from the heart of Persia, these determined warriors pursued the fugi­ tive monarch over the wide champaigns and rugged forests of the Tartarian deserts, till they compelled him and his whole court at length to take shelter in one of the strongest fortresses he pos­ sessed, in a remote part of his dominion. As, on the sack of Balkh, Argiasp had seized and sent captive into Turan the sisters of Asfendiar, and as these constantly attended the court, it was necessary to make use of stratagem to procure the return of the princesses without injury: Asfendiar, therefore, himself boldly undertook and successfully accomplished an expedition of great hazard for their rescue. To the fortress in question, says Mirkhond, there lay open only three roads. The first, plain, and easily passa­ ble by caravans, with plenty of fine pasture on each side for cavalry; but withal so long and circuitous that it would require several months for an army to approach the city by that avenue: to this road was necessarily confined the march of the great body of the Persian army and the heavy baggage. The second road was ex­ tremely steep and rugged, and impassable by carriages; but, at the same time, so direct, that, in a month, at farthest, the fortress might be reached.- The third was still nearer, but lay through woods and morasses, and over mountains covered with snow. The second of these roads was that on which a large selected body Z zz 2

of cavalry, with Bashuten at their head, was ordered to advance with all possible celerity. On the third road, Asfendiar determined to force his way through every surrounding obstacle on the se­ cret expedition which he meditated. After unfolding his plan to his brother Bashuten, he set off from the Persian camp with seven other noblemen disguised as merchants, carrying with them jewels and other valuable commodities, small of size, but in great request at the courts of Asia. Under this disguise, which was a sure passport in the East, where commerce has ever been so highly respected, they passed through the hostile camp, and arrived safe and unsuspected at the city adjoining to that fortress. Here the splendor of the jewellery and other articles of traffic which they had brought attracted general notice, and the fame of their ar­ rival soon reached the court, at a period when kings themselves did not indignantly disdain sometimes to assume the honourable cha­ racter which these strangers bore. But their principal recommen­ dation to royal notice was the alleged plea of having been driven from the Persian dominions by the tyranny and extortions of its monarch, from whose barbarous exactions they professed to have fled for protection to the court of Turan. Presents of high value, the usual tribute on supplicating the patronage of the despots of Asia, accompanied this address, and by degrees these mercantile strangers grew into such high favour at the court of Turan, and so far had the disguised Asfendiar wrought himself into the con­ fidence of Argiasp^ that a sumptuous banquet was prepared by the king for the princely adventurer. After a certain period, when he thought the Persian forces had arrived near enough to execute their commission, he obtained permission, in return, to provide an entertainment, suitable to the high dignity of the guests, for the whole Turanian court, in an extensive meadow adjoining the city. On that day, the king, his family, the cap­ tive princesses, and all the attendant officers of state, presuming that the invading army was still at a great distance from the scene

of their festivity, resigned themselves to the unbounded joys of the banquet; but the numerous fires kindled all over the plain, by which that banquet was prepared, in addition, perhaps, to signals like our rockets, thrown into the air, which we know to have been immemorially used in the campaigns of Asia, were the directing flames that lighted the Persian cavalry from the woody ambuscades in which they lay hid to vengeance and to glory, if, indeed, true glory can ever really be united with sentiments of vengeance. At that luminous signal, the impetuous phalanx of Persia burst forth from their retreat, and, while one part surrounded the field, and all the avenues that led to the city and fortress, the other part acted the bloody office of executioners to the assembled nobles and terrified citizens. Asfendiar himself, at the head of his seven heroic comrades, and now arrayed in a different attire from that of merchants, having first secured his sisters, and sent them back under a strong guard to Persia, along the road by which the cavalry had arrived, with his own hand slew the unhappy sovereign of T uran; while those in his train devoted to promiscuous slaughter the principal grandees of his court. The chief booty obtained, says our historian, on this memorable occasion, was-a throne of gold, set with precious stones, of exquisite workmanship, and a white elephant. These he sent into Persia as presents to his fa­ ther, and followed them himself as far as the mountains of Cau­ casus, whither we shall presently return to him, after detailing another important event of this reign materially connected with the subject of our history, and prominently conspicuous in the an­ cient annals of Asia.* In the introductory work,^ when speaking of the ancient com­ merce carried on between India and Persia, I had occasion to ob­ serve, that the latter nation, from the earliest periods, were equally restrained, by the precepts of religion and the dictates of policy, * Mirkhond Hist. sect. i 6. f See Indian Antiquities, vol.vi. p.406.

from engaging in maritime expeditions. The element of water, not less than that of fire, was the object of their superstitious veneration; and, while that superstition made them shudder at the idea of pol­ luting it themselves, by any species of filth, thrown from vessels, the dread of invasion from a quarter in which they were so defence­ less induced them to prohibit the entrance of foreigners into their dominions, by any maritime inlet, under penalties extremely ri­ gorous. To render that event impossible by the channel of their two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, they effectually dammed up the mouths of those rivers with immense engines; to remove which cost Alexander, when his fleet, under the command of Nearchus, sailed, by the route of the Persian Gulph, into Mesopo­ tamia, no small portion of time and labour. At length, roused to a sense of danger by the accounts brought to the court of Persia of the maritime genius of Greece, and of the great naval armaments fitting out in the various ports of that nation, their brave and aspiring neigh­ bour, the Persian sovereigns broke through the fetters of their ancient superstition, and, by the assistance of the Phoenicians, and even of the Greeks themselves, I mean the Ionic and Carian Greeks, constructed a navy, and ploughed the forbidden ocean. In this new project, am­ bition also had a considerable share, and it was a desire of ascertain­ ing the exact point at which the Indus meets the ocean, as well as of exploring and conquering the western provinces of India, that in­ duced Darius to fit out at Caspatyrus, a city on the Indus, and in the territories of Pactyia, the modern Pecchely, the fleet so celebrated in history, of which he gave the command to Scylax, a Grecian of Caryandria, a city of Caria, and sent with him others in whose nau­ tical skill he placed an entire confidence, with express orders to sail down the current of that rapid river; diligently to observe the countries that lay on either side of i t ; to enter the southern ocean beyond it; to coast along the Persian and Arabian shore; to enter the Red Sea by the Straits of Babelmandel; and, finally, sailing up that Gulph, to land in Egypt, at the same place whence Necho,

king of Egypt, some time before, dispatched a fleet of Phoenicians with orders to sail round the coast of Lybia,* and by that route return westward to the capital of Persia. By Lybia our historian means, in general, Africa, and the port where they landed, was probably Arsinoe, situated on the extreme western point of the Gulph, near which the modern Suez stands. This tedious, and, for those days, hazardous, navigation, Scylax and his companions suc­ cessfully accomplished in the thirtieth month from its commence­ ment; and, arriving at the court of Susa with the desired intelligence, animated that monarch to attempt the conquest of the western re­ gion of India. This conquest, according to our historian, he after­ wards fortunately effected; but he acquaints us with no farther par­ ticulars concerning, it. In his third book, however, enumerating the provinces subject to Persia, which, under Darius Hystaspes, are said to have amounted to twenty in number, and the tribute derived from them, India ranks as one of them, and the tribute of the newly- conquered province is stated at four thousand six hundred and eighty Euboic talents, amounting to nearly a third part of the whole re­ venue of his other dominions, which was fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty Euboic talents, or <£2,807,437 sterling.j- The Indian tribute, he tells us, was paid in gold, while that of all the other satrapies was paid in silver. Herodotus is very particular in relating this fact; for, in one place, he expressly declares they paid six hundred talents in golden ingots', in another, that it was three hundred and sixty talents of gold, the number of the days of the ancient Persian year. The reason of the Indian tribute being paid in gold rather than silver is properly assigned by Rennel, from the Ayeen Akbery, that “ the eastern branches of the Indus, as well as some other streams that descend from the northern mountains, an­ ciently yielded gold-dust.”^;

As this maritime expedition was entrusted to a Greek admiral, the account of it by a Greek writer is most likely to be cor­ rect. The Persian historian, however, makes little mention of i t ; he only observes, that Asfendiar, the son of Hystaspes, on his re­ turn from the conquest of Turan, crossed the mountains of Cauca­ sus, witft intent to survey the Indian Ocean, and compel the princes bordering on the Indus to renounce idolatry and embrace the reformed religion of %eratusht.* If this prince pursued his march so far southward as to reach the shore of Guzzurat, washed by the Indian Sea, his line of conquest must have been exten­ sive indeed, and satisfactorily accounts for the large annual tri­ bute obtained by this vast acquisition of territory to the Persian crown: most probably, however, the fleet in question attended the progress of the invading army, and, as much as possible, faci­ litated its motions and assisted its operations. Although we did not think it necessary to enter into any par­ ticular detail concerning the events of the Ionian war, commenced at the beginning of this reign, because not immediately con­ nected with those of the Indian history, yet, before we close our review of the life of Hystaspes, it is important to notice that his dispute, or, rather, the disputes of the governors who commanded in the distant provinces that bordered on Greece, with that war­ like people, was the certain, though remote, origin of all those violent contests which afterwards convulsed the two states, and ul­ timately terminated in the subversion of the Persian empire. The immense distance of the Grecian republics from the capital of Per­ sia, from which they were separated by the great Tauric range that runs through Asia, and their apparent insignificancy as a na­ tion, added to the endless feuds and jealousy that raged among themselves, would probably have for ever prevented their beco­ ming an object of apprehension to the Persians, had it not been * Mirkhond apud Texeira, p. 68.

for their great experience in maritime concerns and the restless ambition of some of their chiefs, whose intrigues or perfidy brought down upon them the vengeance of the satraps of Sardis. The greater the exertions made by the Persians for the establishment 0 of a navy, the more sensible did they become of the growing power of that republic, the more feelingly did they lament their own inferiority on that ocean, upon which, as upon land, they equally now aspired at uncontrolled dominion. It was not, how­ ever, the Greeks of the distant islands that yet excited any vio­ lent sensation of alarm at the Persian court, it was the Greeks settled in the nearer districts of Ionia and iEolia, whose history, or, at least, all of it that is important to our subject to be rela­ ted, is as follows. —•The rich and flourishing kingdom of Lydia, previously to its reduction, had early cherished, on its extensive coast, successive colonies from Athens, Thebes, and the other great cities of Greece; and these Asiatic Greeks, firmly established and widely diffused over the western shore of Asia Minor, by assi­ duously cultivating that commerce, for carrying on which they were so advantageously situated, at the time of the subjugation of Crcesus, had arrived at no inconsiderable height of splendor and power. In the overwhelming violence, however, with which the weight of the Persian power descended upon that region of Asia, distinction was lost, and subordinate states and interests in- gulphed. Lydia became a province of the Persian empire, and the Greek republics of Ionia, dependent upon it, after a resolute, but ineffectual, resistance to the generals of Cyrus, commissioned to effect the complete conquest of them, finally became tribu­ tary to the Persian monarch. In the next reign, Cambyses, du­ ring his frantic Egyptian expedition, (if, in fact, it ever took place,) derived the greatest advantage from the assistance of the Greeks of Ionia and Caria, who, with singular deviation from those principles of liberty and independence on which the Gieek republics were originally founded, had enlisted as auxiliaries in his v o l . ir. A aa a

own army and that of Prammetichus, his adversary, and were the means of affixing, in future, on all their successors, the dis­ graceful title of mercenaries. Nor was his land-army alone re­ cruited from the Greeks of that district; they furnished him also with a considerable navy, towards effecting the purpose of his expedition. During the early period of the reign of Hystaspes, the Ionian Greeks continued uninterruptedly to pursue the same rapid career of wealth and commerce, and rose so high in na­ val renown that all the islands of the iEgean-Sea either felt or trembled at their power. Instigated, at length, by some daring chiefs of their own nation,.and some disaffected Persian nobles, exiled from the court, confiding on their decided superiority in naval con­ cerns, and relying on the vigorous support of the other repub­ lics of Greece, they endeavoured to wrest the whole of that rich satrapy from the hands of the Persians. The result of this bold project, and of subsequent very spirited efforts to accom­ plish it, proved very different from what their sanguine expec­ tations had predicted, and what in fact the boldness of the de­ sign merited ; for, though the Athenians, enraged at some recent insults received from the court of Sardis, joined them with a considerable naval force, (the more cautious Lacedaemonians re­ fusing to have any share in the war,) and though Sardis itself was taken by the united forces, and the greater part of that ce­ lebrated capital burnt; yet the triumph of the Grecians was but temporary, and their total overthrow, which followed almost im­ mediately, under the walls of Ephesus, served only, for the pre­ sent, to bind more firmly the Persian fetters on their Greek sub­ jects of Asia Minor. For Athens, and the other Greek confe­ derates who assisted the revolters, a severer vengeance was meditated by the conqueror, and the accidental burning of Sardis was but a prelude to those more fatal flames by which the finest tem­ ples and loftiest edifices of Greece were consumed, and Athens itself, with other celebrated cities, levelled with the dust. Hy-

stapes, however, did not survive this event long enough to in- flict that ultimate revenge : he lived, indeed, to witness the de­ solation of Eretria, one marked object of his implacable resent­ ment, but he also lived to have the transports it occasioned ef­ faced amid the pangs inflicted by the disgraceful defeat of his troops on the plain of Marathon, that disastrous plain on which the Persian eagles, for the first time, bowed the head in battle to the rising genius of Greece.* B a h a m a n , the son of Asfendiar, and consequently the grand­ son of Gushstasp, is mentioned in the Oriental histories as the im­ mediate successor of the latter on the throne of Persia. His Persian surname is D i r a z d e s t , literally translated by the Greeks Mux.(>oxei(>, or the Long-Handed,, in which we have a just spe­ cimen of the confused manner in which the Greeks have handed down to us, in the order of succession, the names of the Per­ sian sovereigns. This prince ought properly to be the Xerxes of the Greeks ; a name probably derived from S h i r s h a h . Sir William Jones offers the only explanation which I have met with of this difficulty, when he says, “ Our chronologists place the reign of Xerxes after Darius Hystaspes; and he might, per­ haps, have outlived both Lohorasp and his successor.”j- He must, however, on this supposition, have flourished to a wonderful old age, and, at all events, is a very different character from the youth­ ful, ardent, aspiring, Xerxes of the Greeks. From his other name of Ardeshir, often given him in Mirkhond, he is, most probably, the Artaxerxes of their history. Mirkhond, in Texeira, asserts, that his right hand and arm were actually considerably longer than his le ft; but the judicious author above-cited thinks that his title of Longimanus metaphorically alluded to his extensive pow­ er. There certainly are not, in the Oriental writers, as Mr. Rich­ ardson has observed, any accounts, similar to those of the Greeks, Aaaa 2

of the invasion of Greece by the myriads of Xerxes, or of the subsequent defeat of that monarch and the dispersion of his in­ numerable army and fleet. A defeat and compelled retreat of such a disgraceful kind was not likely to become the theme of any cotemporary domestic historian in the despotic empire of A- sia; or, if the story were ever recorded by the Persian historic muse, may it not have perished with the archives of the state, and the other treasures of Persian literature, on the invasion of the Greeks, and amidst the flames that consumed Persepolis? It is impossible to conceive that Herodotus, who flourished so near that period, and doubtless had his account from eye-witnesses of that dreadful catastrophe, could be deceived as to the leading cir­ cumstances of a fact of such public notoriety; or to coincide with Mr. Richardson in opinion, that the movements of a Per­ sian general and the inferior army of a satrap, or several satraps, could be mistaken for the solemn march of Xerxes himself and the concentrated force of the whole Persian empire. Convinced, therefore, that, in travelling over the page of Greek history, de­ scribing this invasion, we are not wholly treading on fairy-ground, and that, under whatever name, a monarch of the genius and cha­ racter of Xerxes once sate on the Persian throne, I shall pro­ ceed to connect the narrative of events before-described, as ul­ timately tending to the subjugation of India, by a concise re­ capitulation of facts, which, though well known to every clas­ sical scholar, cannot, consistently with the object of this history and the information of the less learned, be entirely omitted. Twice, in the preceding reign of Darius, had the small king­ dom of Macedonia been compelled to pay to that monarch the accustomed, but degrading, tribute of earth and water: first, at the return of Darius from his Scythian expedition, when he appointed Megabazus commander-in-chief of the forces in the western extremity of his empire, and who obtained that mark of homage to his master from Amyntas, the reigning monarch;

secondly, after the Ionian revolt and conquest, when Mardo- nius, the Persian satrap, led the first armament against the Greek inhabitants ot the islands of the iEgean-Sea. That armament, however formidable, proved inefficacious as to its objects, as well from a furious storm that dashed to pieces the greatest part of the Persian fleet, when attempting to double the Cape of Mount Athos, as from an unexpected attack made by night on his army by the Brygian Thracians, who stormed his camp, not sufficiently fortified, slew a great number of his men, and, wounding Mar- donius himself, compelled him for that season to relinquish the expedition. With the ensuing spring the design was renewed: an army and fleet more powerful, commanded by generals more skilful and determined, were ordered to enforce on the Grecian republics the usual demand of earth and water from the haughty Persians; but the undaunted spirit of the insular Greeks could not brook the indignity to which the feebler government of Macedon had tamely submitted. At Athens and at Lacedaemon, when the heralds of Darius appeared publicly, to demand that proof of their submission, the general indignation was so extreme, that, at the one place, amidst the execrations of the people, they were thrown into a deep ditch, and at the other into a well, and, in the firm language of free-born men, told there to collect the required earth and water.* A sense of the danger that now threatened all Greece put an end to the debates which had previously, for many ages, agitated those rival republics, and united them in one firm body against the common enemy. The glory, however, of Marathon’s proud day was reserved solely for Miltiades and his daring A- thenians, who, in number scarcely ten thousand, defeated the Persian army, consisting, according to the moderate computation of Cornelius Nepos, of one hundred thousand foot and ten thou­ sand cavalry.j- The disgrace of this defeat from so despised a

power was severely felt at the court ol Susa, and stung Danus to the quick, who was then preparing to march against Egypt, engaged in recent revolt. He immediately ordered fresh forces to be levied throughout the whole extent of his empire, and, resigning to able generals the conduct of the war in Egypt, resolved to march in person against this rising competitor for mi­ litary glory. In the midst of these mighty preparations, he ex­ pired ; leaving his successor, whom the Greeks, we have seen, call Xerxes, animated with the same resentment, and ardently bent on the same means of accomplishing the deep-laid project of revenge. The immense army, though doubtless greatly exaggerated, led by this monarch into Greece ; his cutting a passage through Mount Athos, if ever, in reality, accomplished; Iris celebrated double bridge of boats thrown over the Hellespont to connect the two continents of Asia and Europe; his repulse at Thermopylas by the daring valour of Leonidas and his immortal comrades; the plunder of Delphi; and the completion of his revenge by the capture and conflagration of Athens; together with the dis­ graceful defeat of his fleet at Salamis, and the final ignominious retreat of this monarch out of Europe; have been too often the theme of admiring historians and enraptured poets to be dwelt on in these pages, with which they are only collaterally con­ nected. These events, however, mark the beginning and gra­ dual progress of that desperate contest for sovereignty, which could only be terminated by the utter destruction of the one or the other powers at variance. It exceeds belief that the innu­ merable army and fleet of Xerxes, the collected force of ex­ hausted Asia, could be intended to act solely against the petty sovereignties of Greece, for the utter extermination of which a fourth part might have been well deemed amply sufficient. He­ rodotus is of opinion that a more extensive project of conquest in the western regions of the world was in the contemplation of

X erxes; and thus, perhaps, the resolute resistance of Leonidas and his brave three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae might have proved the means of saving Italy and farthest Europe from ra­ vage and desolation. It is deserving of notice, that, whensoever the overbearing power of their Asiatic foes more severely pressed upon the Greeks, the connecting ties between the confederated republics became more firm and binding; but, when that dan­ ger was removed, the leading states were agitated with inces­ sant feuds, and particularly the great cities of Athens and La- cedasmon, who were involved in everlasting contests for superi­ ority of dominion; and, while they themselves spurned the op­ pressive yoke of Persia, in the true democratic spirit, were con­ tinually labouring to fix their own yoke on the neck of their weaker neighbours. Without this powerful incentive to union, perhaps the Grecian states would have continued for ever in their original insignificance and imbecility, the result of that dis­ traction ; and thus, in some measure, Persia may be said to have created the very power that afterwards annihilated herself. It is impossible for any circumstance more strongly to evince the jealous dread, which the court of Susa at this time enter­ tained of the rising power and ambitious views of Athens, than the conduct of Xerxes, in renewing, with that power, after so public and disastrous a defeat, in the ensuing spring, those hos­ tilities, which the re-assembling of his dispersed iorces, still nume­ rous and formidable, enabled him to carry on with energy. Grown wise, however, from sad experience, Xerxes advanced not in per­ son beyond the walls of Sardis. Mardonius was once more ap­ pointed commander-in-chief; but, before he struck the important blow which was intended to annihilate Greece, he was directed to hold out the olive-branch of peace to the Athenians at least, at that time the inspiring soul of the vast confederated body. Little as Xerxes could reasonably flatter himself that the Athe­ nians would be duped by so shallow an artifice, intended, un-

der the mask of friendship, to detach them from their allies and weaken the confederacy, the' attempt was resolved upon; and, by the singular caprice of fortune, it was decided that an A- lexander, then king of Macedonia, should be the herald of the auspicious tidings; an Alexander should plead the cause of an Asiatic despot; an Alexander propose to rivet the chain of Per­ sia on the prostrate neck of Athens. The embassy was received at Athens with merited contempt, and the remembrance alone of the alliance and friendship that had subsisted, for many ge­ nerations, between the two kingdoms of Athens and Macedon, preserved the royal messenger from obloquy and insult. Alex­ ander, however, we shall find, not long, afterwards effaced the guilt of this liberticidal conduct by an undertaking essential to the salvation of Greece; an undertaking fraught with uncom­ mon hazard, and executed with the most undaunted courage. The proffered friendship of Persia, and her proposals of ample indemnification for expenses incurred and damages suffered du­ ring the war, being thus disdainfully rejected by the Athenians, Mardonius immediately commenced his march for Attica. From die distraction and jealousies, which, owing to the miserably de­ fective, though imposing, political system of Greece, still unhap­ pily prevailed through the several republics of the Peloponnesus, Attica was by no means provided with a land-force adequate to oppose them, though their fleet rode triumphant in the surround­ ing seas. By rapid advances, Mardonius soon reached that ca­ pital, which, on his approach, was again deserted by the inha­ bitants, .who took refuge in Salamis, where they could be pro­ tected by the fleet till a sense of shame or of honour should rouse their tardy allies to hasten to their relief, and fulfil the stipulations by which they were bound to act with vigour against the common foe. dhe politic Miardomus took advantage of theii desei ted situation, and again made proposals of accommo­ dation, which were again indignantly rejected. In consequence

of this obstinate refusal to break their solemn engagements, and listen to any terms whatever with the Persians, the enraged Mar- donius, who had hitherto spared Attica and its new-rising capi­ tal, commanded a general plunder of the country, and once more devoted to destruction that ill-fated city. At length the Spar­ tans, sacrificing mistrust and jealousy to a sense of the common danger that impended over Greece, sent off Pausanias, with a body of forty thousand men, including Helots, to their aid ; and these, in their march, being reinforced by other Greek confede­ rates, and finally forming a junction with the Athenian forces at Eleusis, proceeded to offer immediate battle to the enemy. Mar- donius, after ravaging Attica, had retired from that country, and drawn up his numerous forces on the wide champaign of Bceotia, so favourable to the operations of cavalry, ever the glory and prin­ cipal dependence of a Persian army. The celebrated and de­ cisive battle of P l a t a l a was the consequence, in which Mardonius was slain, and the Persian camp stormed and plundered of inesti­ mable booty. This dreadful overthrow, being followed, on the evening of the very same day, by the spirited attack made by the Grecian naval force on the Persian entrenched camp and fleet near the promontory of Mycale, on the coast of Ionia, whose inhabitants, long grown impatient under the Persian despotism, had broke out into general revolt, an attack in which the whole navy of Persia was burnt, put an end to all future inva­ sions of Greece by the Persians, who never afterwards dared to appear on this side the Hellespont. Xerxes, in every instance baffled and defeated, returned precipitately to Susa, impressed with humbler notions of the invincible power of the g r e a t k i n g than he left i t ; and found how little avail, in the field, are myriad bands of slaves, who fight for hire, when opposed to free-born men, who combat for virtue and independence. In the hurry of his departure, however, he forgot not to make a grand sacrifice at the shrine of the national religion ; for, he is- v o l . ii. Bb b b

sued positive orders for all the temples, throughout the Greek settlements in Asia that yet remained in subjection to him, to be burned and levelled, which was rigidly performed in every instance except that of the magnificent fane of Diana of Ephesus.* The reader will now no longer remain in doubt as to the real cause of the total silence or suppression of the Persian annals concerning this reign and its disastrous events: those events, how­ ever, are faithfully recorded by an historian whose fame bids fair to be eternal, and on the elegant medals and sculptured monuments of Greece, which, preserved with pious care in the cabinets of taste and science, probably will only perish with the wreck of nature. The rapid and disgraceful retreat of Xerxes from his western frontier only served to inflame the courage and persevering ardour of the Athenians, to wrest from his control the remainder of the Greek cities and islands subject to his au­ thority in Asia Minor and Europe. With the united exertion of the confederated fleets, under the command of Cymon, the son of the great Miltiades, a soldier equally daring and discreet, in a series of brilliant successes on both the Grecian and Phoeni­ cian coasts, this was effectually performed ; and a large addition both of domain and of revenue was thus obtained to Athens, the head of that confederacy. Their posterity, unfortunately, as the page of Athenian history shews, did not bear the gale of prosperity with the same noble equanimity with which their fathers had braved the rude storm of adversity. They soon grew haughty to their Greek allies and tyrannical to the conquered countries: hence sprang that eternal jealousy, between them and their Spartan ri­ vals, which kindled the dreadful Peloponnesian war, and fully revenged Persia by deluging the cities of Greece with the blood of her most illustrious progeny.-j- * H erodot. lib .ix . cap. 69 - 10o , ubi supra. f Plutarch in V ita Aristidid.

To return to Bahaman, or Ardeshir, in whose reign, doubtless, that of the former monarch has been swallowed up, he is repre­ sented by Mirkhond as a prince remarkable for strict justice and his zealous attachment to the Magian religion, as the reformer of many abuses, and the repairer of many noble structures ruined by the lapse of time or the violence of war. He was also re­ markable for his unbounded hospitality, constantly affirming that no door ought to be shut in the palace of a prince.* He is said, by his generals, to have made conquests in Syria and Palestine; but not a word occurs in Mirkhond concerning Greece; except a remark confirming the accounts of our western chronologers, that Hippocrates and Democritus, philosophers of that country, flou­ rished in this reign, and that their works, with those of Plato and Socrates, are well known to the learned of the Persian nation. He is said to have killed by stratagem the formidable Rostam, who had rebelled and made himself independent in the provinces of Se- jestan and Cabul: but this, we have observed, must be a mis­ take, or Rostam, in that case, must have lived to four hundred years of age. A descendant only of the mighty chief of that name can be alluded to by the Persian annalist.-f From Xerxes (or, rather, the last-mentioned Ardeshir) to the reign of Darius, the younger, under whom the fatal Macedonian invasion took place, according to the Persian annals, only two sove- Teigns swayed the Persian sceptre. These were Homai and her son Darab, and neither of these are recorded to have had any particular intercourse, either in the way of friendship or hostility, with India, which probably continued, during this long interval, to remain un­ disturbed and in. its ancient state of tributary subjection. For the sake of connecting, however, the Persian, Greek, and Indian, his­ tory of this important period, and on the presumption that the Greek historians are worthy of credit in their narration of facts, * Mirkhond, p. 73. + Ibid. p. 7 4 , and Sir W illiam Jones’s Short H is t.o f Persia, p . 52. Bbb b 2

which either the policy of the Persian historians may have con­ cealed, or of which, if recorded, every vestige was swept away du­ ring the long troubles that convulsed Persia to its centre, — urged, 1 say, by these motives, I shall regulate this part of the history by , the accounts that have descended to us from classical writers con­ cerning the order of succession of the Persian sovereigns, and take a rapid review of the principal events that continued to increase the rooted hatred of the two former nations till that dreadful catastrophe took place. The advantageous terms which the valour of Cymon, the Athenian general, had extorted from Artaxerxes at the conclusion of the former war, amounting to an absolute renunciation on the side of that monarch of every claim on any part of the Grecian territory, had se­ cured permanent tranquillity to Greece from that once-dreaded quarter.* But the unceasing jealousy and contest for power which agitated those turbulent republics, and particularly the two leading states, unfortunately gave birth, as was before observed, to the Pelo­ ponnesian war, in which the strength of the contending parties be­ coming at length nearly exhausted, each of those states, with a policy as narrow as the meanness was despicable, made urgent applications to Persia for warlike assistance against the other. It does not appear, however, that the Persians were at all anxious to renew their connection with a people from whom they had already suffered so severely. That war was considerably advanced before any attention was shewn to the application; it was almost finished before any effectual assistance was sent; and then it was sent, not to Athens, the ancient determined foe of Persia, but to Sparta, her ambitious ri­ val. In the mean time Ardeshir, or the first Artaxerxes, dying, Da- rab, or Darius Nothos, that is, the Bastard, succeeded to the vacant throne. This was the son of that Queen Homai, a word in Persian signifying the bird 0/ Paradise, who is said by the Persian writers

to have reigned during his minority, which he is said to have passed in exile from her and her court, having been exposed, as soon as born, in consequence of the predictions of the seers, who calculated his nativity, that he should bring an infinity of evils on his country. “ The Eastern writers tell us,” says Sir William Jones, “ that he was exposed by his mother, like the Hebrew law-giver, on a river, which, by its rapid current, carried him to the habitation of a dyer, who knew him to be a child of high birth by the trinkets which adorned his cradle; that he was educated by this honest man, who sent him to the wars, where he distinguished himself in fighting against the Greeks; that, being introduced to the queen as a brave youth, she knew him again by the jewels which he wore, and which his reputed father had restored to him.” * Sir William brands this story as an Eastern romance, the predictions being supposed to have reference to the invasion of Alexander, which, in fact, took place under a later Darius. The astrologers who made them might possibly have meant by them to excuse the rashness and impolicy of Darius, by imputing the disasters of his reign to the stern inevitable decrees of destiny. I have transcribed it on pur­ pose that the reader may again observe, in this Legend, the usual magnified difficulties which the Asiatic writers are habitually addicted to represent as surmounted, in their infancy and youth, by great personages celebrated in Eastern annals. The whole seems nothing more than a repetition of those undergone by Creeshna and the great Cyrus. The new prince, named Darab, or Dara in Persian, began his reign with an appearance of vigour and prompt decision that marked the ancient kings of Persia, not without a considerable portion of brilliant success in the field against the revolted provinces of Media, Arabia, and Egypt, whose inhabitants seemed inclined to take advantage of the debilitated state of the empire and the in­ experience of the monarch, entirely to shake off then dependance * Short H ist, o f Persia, p. 53.

on Persia.* Iii either circumstance they were deceived, nor did the principals of the Grecian commonwealth less effectually impose upon themselves, when they conceived that a power which had recently experienced such a humiliating reverse of fortune, from their joint exertions, would heartily join with either to effect the complete reduction of the other. The experience of half a century had taught the court of Susa that the Grecian states were then only not formidable to Persia when she was distracted with internal dissensions, and to keep their passions in ferment, and their re­ spective interests and powers so properly balanced against each other, that neither side, if it were possible, should materially pre­ ponderate, would be the line of sound policy for her invariably to pursue. Such appear to have been the constant maxims that swayed the two predecessors of Darius Nothos, and such was the wise conduct of the satraps of Sardis, till the unfortunate period when the younger Cyrus, m the inexperienced ardour of early youth, was invested with the command of that important province, with positive orders, which his impetuous disposition scarcely needed, by calling forth all the resources of that rich satrapy to destroy that equipoise, and se­ cure to Lacedasmon a decided superiority over Athens. The result was, what might easily have been foreseen. The orders, if ever in reality given, (for, doubts may very reasonably be entertained,) were a disgrace to the policy of the hitherto cautious court of Susa. The Peloponnesian war, stained as it was with the blackest perfidies and the most barbarous massacres on either side, through the influence of Persian gold, ended in the complete subjugation of Athens. But this important event, while it crushed the ancient and sworn foe of Persia, exalted its antagonist to that height of glory and power, wmch in the end would have undoubtedly proved fatal to their protectors, had they not resorted to the very same means as before ot dividing, and consequently weakening, the authority which they

dreaded; and had they not squandered the treasures of Sardis in the profusest bribery, and conquered Agesilaus, as he himself confessed, with an army not of thirty thousand men, but of thirty thousand darics. However deficient we may be in authentic Persian records to guide us through the train of events that distinguish the present period of their empire, it is fortunate for the credit of history that we have the advantage of referring, as we proceed, for the truth of the extraordinary facts related in it to two Greek writers of the highest honour and veracity, who were successively eye-witnesses of the facts which their pens describe, and on whose relation we can rest with the fullest confidence,— Thucydides and Xenophon. The former was as distinguished for his abilities as a profound politician and statesman as for his elegance and authenticity as an historian: the latter attended the younger Cyrus in that memorable, but fruit­ less, expedition to the plains of Babylon, w'hich his pen so elegantly relates, and which, as still farther inflaming the hatred of the two nations, it is necessary for us cursorily to notice. The despotic cruelty with which that haughty young prince acted in his satrapy of Sardis, added to his assumption of honours scarcely less than imperial, occasioned his recall to the court of his incensed father, where, however, the unbounded influence of Parysatis, his mother, over Darius, procured not only his pardon, but a bequest in per­ petuity of the government which he had relinquished. During his stay at Susa, Darius Nothos died, and was succeeded by the second Ardeshir, the elder brother of Cyrus, called by the Greeks, from his uncommon strength of memory, Artaxerxes Mnemon. The violent temper and ambition of the prince urging him to make an attempt at once on the life and throne of the new monarch; on the fortunate discovery of the conspiracy almost at the moment when it was to have been executed, Cyrus was seized and condemned to death for the intended fratricide; but here again parental affection interfered in his behalf, and he was not only pardoned, but, with

glaring impolicy, sent to take possession of the government be­ queathed him by his deceased father. The soul of Cyrus, instead of overflowing with gratitude to so benevolent a king and brother, was inflamed with revenge at the design of taking away his justly- forfeited life; and, immediately on his arrival at Sardis, his rage broke forth in a secret and cautious, but most malignant and de­ termined, project to usurp the throne, and sacrifice to his vengeance a too lenient brother. The preparations made by Cyrus, both by sea and land, for this important undertaking, according to the accurate and elegant ac­ count of the historian Xenophon, who beheld them, were of an ex­ tent and magnitude adequate to the bold design. The whole of the maritime provinces of his satrapy were compelled to furnish an am­ ple supply of ships and men, which were put under the direction of Tamos, an Egyptian well skilled in naval affairs; while a powerful additional fleet, under Pythagoras, sailed from Sparta to join the naval force collected on the coasts of Asia. This fleet was intended to awe the coast of Cilicia and other maritime provinces, through which their progress lay, and cause a diversion of the forces which might be sent to oppose their march by land. By land, an army of a hundred thousand of the choicest regular troops, fit for such an arduous enterprize, were assembled, and the command of them gi­ ven to Persian officers, in whose courage and attachment Cyrus knew he could confide: but, what was, at that time, of far more consequence in a land-engagement, a band of determined Greeks, to the amount of thirteen thousand, were assembled from all the states in alliance with Lacedasmon, and marched, in a firm pha­ lanx, under the command of Clearchus, a general equally renowned for policy and valour. Tidings of these formidable preparations soon reached the court of Susa; but the artful satrap contrived to quiet the apprehensions to which they naturally gave rise by solemn assu­ rances that they were intended partly to reduce Thrace, and partly to repel the aggressions of Tissaphernes, a neighbouring satrap at en-

inity with Cyrus, and against whom ho insidiously preferred the loudest complaints of treachery and rebellion. As it was, at that period of its debilitated authority, the wretched policy of the Persian court to encourage perpetual disputes between the governors of the distant provinces, with a view to incapacitate them for engaging in projects of higher ambition, for some time Artaxerxes continued without alarm, though not without suspicion, at the reports of the increasing numbers that daily flocked to the standard of his perfidious brother. At length Tissaphernes, con­ vinced of the real designs of his rival, set off with all speed from Miletus to the imperial residence, and gave such indubitable proofs both of his own innocence and of the treason of Cyrus, as induced Darius immediately to take the field with a great army, that he might be prepared to meet the danger that threatened his throne and life. Having drawn out his forces on the spacious plains of Cunaxa, in the province of Babylon, where the Persian cavalry, still formidable in battle, could act with most effect, he there fixed his camp, and waited with dignified composure the awful day that was to establish, or annihilate, his just claim to the throne of Persia against the intrigues and usurpation of his turbulent and aspiring brother. Cyrus, in the mean time, was advancing to the Babylonian terri­ tory, by long and rapid marches, at the head of an army of which Clearchus and the principal Persian leaders alone knew the real desti­ nation. The incessant fatigues they endured, the mysterious silence observed in regard to the enemy with whom they were to contend, want of regular and sufficient pay, owing to the exhausted treasury of Cyrus, together with numerous other irritating causes, required the exertion of the most consummate policy joined to the most undaunted firmness, in the general, to keep so vast and various an assemblage of men from mutiny; and especially the Greeks, who were several times on the point of disbanding. When, at length, after having passed the great Tauric range, they had advanced so VOL. i i . Cc c c